How Did Qatar Get The World Cup?

The 2022 Qatar World Cup Is Already A Disaster - What The Hell Was FIFA Thinking?

England foolishly boasted of having the world’s biggest soccer economy. To many ExCo members, that was one of countless reasons why they weren’t going to give England the World Cup. A tournament in England — or Spain and Portugal, or Belgium and the Netherlands — wouldn’t have grown soccer there. The only European bidder that offers room for growth is Russia. Its 142 million inhabitants aren’t yet saturated with soccer. Just look at the puny crowds in the Russian Premier League: just over 13,000 spectators a game. That’s less than the Dutch or Scottish top divisions, and less than the second tiers of English and German soccer. Russia is new territory.

It also had some very impressive lobbyists, notably Vladimir Putin. If you are an ExCo member and the Russian premier calls, you listen. He knows how to make a very convincing offer. For instance, it’s thought that the South Korean ExCo member Chung Mong-joon changed his vote from England to Russia at the last minute because his government asked him to. The South Koreans wanted Putin’s support in the conflict with North Korea. That’s how important getting the World Cup was to Russia, and how hard Russia played the game.

Currying World Cup favor

Qatar, though, is no Russia. With 1.5 million inhabitants, it’s hardly a major emerging market or global power. To understand why it got the World Cup, you need to look at its two great assets: oil money and Mohammad Bin Hammam, the amiable Qatari who runs the Asian Football Confederation, the largest continental federation on earth.

If you’re rolling in oil money, you don’t need to spend it on something as tacky as bribing people. Qatar was more inventive than that. This January, the not-very-rich Confederation of African Football held its congress in Angola. Qatar — not an African country, last time anybody checked — sponsored the meeting. As part of the deal, it was the only World Cup bidder allowed to make presentations to the African ExCo members. A disgruntled lobbyist from another bidding country sent out an e-mail saying: “As far as memory goes, it is the very first time that a congress excludes 99% of bidding nations from being present, and at the same time offers its forum to only one nation.”

Nobody ever saw the bids lobby, but private meetings like the ones in Angola probably decided the destination of both World Cups. If you are a bidder, you can sit down with an ExCo member over a glass of excellent wine and ask him how you can help "develop" soccer in his country. He might ask you to fly one of his country’s youth teams to a tournament across the world. He might ask you to build his country a stadium. He might ask you for both, and more besides. You can give him these things quite legally. You can also invite him on a "fact-finding" trip to your country. Of course you won’t fly him in economy class, or make him stay in the Holiday Inn, and you’ll ensure he has fun. All that is probably legal — FIFA’s regulations aren’t altogether clear. Lobbying wins World Cups. You just need to have some money to spend. The British media is now grumbling about the $24 million "wasted" on England’s bid, but the frank truth is that $24 million probably wasn’t enough. If you really want a World Cup, the game is expensive and dirty.

Greasing the wheels of ExCo members was only the beginning for Qatar...